


No Skipping Out On Me

by Cameron_McKell



Series: Upon Further Review [5]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Attempted Invasion, M/M, Major Character Injury, Non-Human Humanoids, Self-Sacrifice, Slow Deresolution, Tron Fandom Ship Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cameron_McKell/pseuds/Cameron_McKell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam races to undo Tron's stupidity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Skipping Out On Me

Sam's heart crawled up his throat and died.

 

All reports had indicated that it was a routine threat to system security; just a low-threat malware program nosing around for some personal information. Shutting it down was almost going to be _fun._

 

Until it turned out that the 'simple malware' was actually the first phase of a corporate-level attack that had mistakenly identified the Grid as ENCOM's mainframe. So Sam, Tron, and Quorra had to face off against an army until the other monitors arrived, and they could shut off the connection.

 

He wished he could undo his decision to connect the Grid to the internet.

 

Tron had been completely in his element, executing the function he'd been designed for, locking down open access ports and derezzing the unauthorized programs all over the place. Sam had been holding his own, and Quorra had been doing more than that, but Sam _knew_ that that wasn't going to last.

 

He wished he could call back that last disk throw as soon as it happened, leaving himself open to attack from the program before him who'd dodged in a way that didn't seem possible, until it ricocheted back.

 

Tron barreled into the User at full speed, blocking the infiltrator's slash with Sam's stolen light katana with his staff, just inches from his own face. Sam, in the meantime, was left to stumble from the force of the blow into Quorra, knocking the two of them through the main gateway to the connection ports in a mess of limbs.

 

Tron glanced over briefly, to make sure the two of them were okay, and his distraction, and the fact that both of his hands were occupied holding to the staff, left him vulnerable.

 

A disk from one of the other remaining hostiles – centered around the last open port to keep it from closing – flew at him from behind, and sliced clean through, right above the circular circuit nodes on his lower back.

 

And Sam's world came screeching to a halt.

 

Hitting Tron altered the angle of the disk, so it hit his opponent slightly higher, and she promptly derezzed. Normally this would have registered to Sam as evidence of poor workmanship, but the only thing registering in his mind was the growing spread of cracks, chunks of data sloughing off, and the glow of damage-red slowly taking over Tron's back.

 

Tron dropped his staff.

 

“No.”

 

Completely ignored in the corner of Sam's eye, Tron's disks completed their long ricochets, and took out the two programs settled in front of the port controls.

 

Tron turned then, his upper and lower halves not _quite_ moving completely together, and grabbed up the two grenades he habitually docked to those circular nodes, which crumbled away to red at the touch. Gradually listing to the side, he smiled at Sam, and threw the two grenades as one of his legs abruptly derezzed, and he crashed to the floor.

 

One grenade flew toward the port controls and the last hostile programs, the other attached to the controls of the main gateway, locking it down, locking any hostile programs that might survive the blast in.

 

And locking Sam and Quorra out.

 

“NO! Tron!”

 

Suddenly kicked into action, the two of them scrambled to their feet, and Sam banged on the door. He needed to override this – he needed to –

 

There was a pair of muffled booms.

 

It took Sam almost two minutes to work through Tron's level of override on the door.

 

Chaos greeted him; the last port was darkened and closed, a heap of geometric chunks of data slowly breaking down into voxels all around it, the door controls to his right were sparking and mangled almost beyond recognition, and Tron was lying motionless on the ground, eyes fixed blindly upward.

 

Well, _half_ of him was, anyway.

 

Sam made an inarticulate, hysterical noise, and ran over to him; there was a large fissure running up Tron's torso, like an imitation of Clu's near-killing blow from the opposite direction, and his circuitry was a sickly sort of gray color that kept flickering to red.

 

“Is he...?” Quorra's voice came from behind him, and he remembered again that she was here. That this wasn't some bad dream to be undone upon waking.

 

“Go get Alan! And hurry!” He'd feel bad about being short with her later, but for now, all of Sam's attention had shifted to trying to gauge the rate of breakdown, and how he would _fix this_.

 

Because he _had_ to fix this.

 

He reached out to touch Tron lightly, but immediately pulled back when a new series of cracks spread out from just that much pressure.

 

His disks; Sam needed Tron's disks to repair him, so he went scrambling to search for them. They were lying near each other, inert, against the far corner of the wall, where they'd skidded to a stop after the failed return flight. He merged them together then turned, just in time to see a heavy wave of red wash over Tron's circuits, and a large chunk of his side break off.

 

“No no no no no!” He hurried back over and dropped to his knees, skidding a little from his own momentum, then brought up the disks' display. His hands and mind flew over the displayed information, trying to slow, stop, _undo_ any bit of the damage he could, to buy Tron – and himself – time so that Alan could get there; Sam knew Tron's code pretty well by this point, but only Tron's User knew it all, and could fix this level of extensive – _not_ lethal, oh, _please_ don't let it be lethal – damage.

 

“Hang on, Tron; Alan's coming, and we'll fix this.”

 

Tron's face was oddly blank and peaceful, except that little smile he'd turned on Sam just before he fell.

 

That smile was going to haunt Sam's nightmares for the rest of his life.

 

“Just hang on, sweetheart. Please...”


End file.
